So tomorrow is the 1st of December and Christmas is officially open for business in our house. Child 3 has been trying to change that, embarking on a list for Santa designed on Canva (I kid you not) some weeks ago, but we have held resolute. On the side, however, I have been building up quite a list of books I’d love to get my hands on this year. All non-fiction and chosen for wildly different reasons, but all lined up and ready to share.

I’ll be posting one book a day. I’m excited to share my #historywishes and if you have read them already or are interested in any of the books I’m featuring, I’d love to hear from you.

This is the kind of non-fiction I really enjoy – clearly well researched but also highly readable and engaging. I particularly liked the way Peter Ross Range gave his view on Hitler’s character in passages like this one:

“When faced with high-risk situations, Hitler’s instinct was almost always to take the leap. Action was his aphrodisiac, his catnip, his default.”

Among lots of interesting insights, I was struck by the discussion of Hitler’s reading habits. Ross Range suggests that historians differ on the amount of reading Hitler actually did. Although it seems pretty clear that he owned a lot of books, as any bibliophile knows, owning and reading are not always the same thing. I subsequently found an interesting article about Hitler’s reading habits in the New York Times, and also this photo of Hitler in his Munich apartment which Peter Ross Range also mentions in his book.